The Basis for Attribution in the Canon of Eliza Haywood

Eliza Haywood (1693 – 1756) has gained more critical attention in recent years, but the bibliographical foundations for her canon largely remain unquestioned. Patrick Spedding, in his heavily documented 2004 bibliography, lists 72 works as ‘certainly by Haywood’. Of these 72 items, 42 were published during just seven years, from 1723 to 1729 inclusive. This represents some 330 sheets, equivalent to more than 5000 pages in octavo. Did Haywood really write all these texts? What is the basis for their attribution? The texts in Spedding’s bibliography are attributed to Haywood on the basis of a wide variety of types of evidence, and Spedding’s bibliography does not account for any measure of doubt in each attribution case: works are either by Haywood, or they are not. In this article, I will argue that 29 out of Spedding’s 72 works are attributed based on less than satisfactory evidence -- including Bath-Intrigues (1724), The Opera of Operas (1733), and The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751). I am focusing primarily on external evidence, rather than internal, and I am purposely looking at the evidence skeptically in order to re-assess its validity. In many cases there may be suggestive internal evidence or biographical parallels that point towards Haywood as a likely author, but in the absence of solid proof such attributions must be considered warily. I am not suggesting that we de-attribute these works, but rather that we need to be more cautious in considering Haywood’s authorship as certain. If we are to regard Haywood as an important writer whose works deserve close scrutiny, we need to be more scrupulous about the evidence we use to determine what she wrote, and to acknowledge degrees of confidence and doubt.